5215 OLEAGINOUS PLANTS. 



speculation of ours, but we feel authorised to advance this assertion from the 

 fact that one bushel of kernels, completely worked up, will make two gallons of 

 oil. But to work them up is the thing, plentiful as they are ; we however, 

 hrsit;ite not to say, that it c?n be done and probably will be. 



Having now so far conquered the difficulties attending the manufacture of 

 this oil, as that we can safely vouch a reasonable supply for home consumption, 

 we most cheerfully recommend it to the citizens of this Republic, whose de- 

 mands for it, for eating purposes, we doubt not can be supplied, and OIL very 

 reasonable terms. 



We will assure our customers that there will not be an ounce of dirt or 

 sediment in a hundred pounds of our oil. 



The recent abolition of the soap duty, by stimulating the de- 

 mand for palm oil, will have an instant effect on the trade and 

 commerce of Western Africa, by confirming the suppression of the 

 slave trade, and giving an additional impetus to negro improvement. 

 It will also increase the production for England of ground nuts, 

 whence the oil so largely used in making continental soaps is ex- 

 pressed. " When (observes a recent writer) the Portuguese first 

 treated with that coast, they found palm oil and ground nuts arti- 

 cles of native food, and so they remained down to a period within 

 living memory. So used, they neither required any cultivation 

 nor gave rise to any notions of property. Though whole tracts of 

 country are crowded by the oil-palm tree, little care was taken of 

 what was, in fact, superabundant ; and as for ground nuts, they 

 were simply dug up as prudence or necessity dictated. Some thirty 

 years ago a cask or two of palm oil was sent home from the Gold 

 Coast ; it met so ready a sale that it was further inquired after, and 

 the total amount now imported into England ranges from 25.000 

 to 30,000 tons annually. The exportation of ground nuts is even 

 larger ; but, owing to our excise on soap, they had heretofore gone 

 principally to France to Marseilles especially. 



" Of these two articles, it is to be observed, the Western Coast 

 of Africa appears to have a monopoly ; and with respect to palm 

 oil, it is further to be remarked, that it is exactly behind those 

 ports and up those rivers, which were formerly the great nests of 

 the slave trade, that its production is largest ; and just as the 

 slave trade there has been crushed, a commerce in palm oil has 

 sprung up and replaced it. There are men alive who recollect the 

 slave trade flourishing on the Gold Coast ; it has long been extinct 

 there, and palm oil is now largely exported. It is but a very lew 

 years ago since that traffic appeared to be irrepressible at the 

 mouths of the Niger: it is now expelled, and thence Liverpool 

 obtains, instead, its supplies of palm oil. So also, later still, at 

 Whydah, and the other ports of the kingdom of'Dahomy, and along 

 the Lagoon, which connects Dahomy with the Benin River, there the 

 Spanish slave dealers are themselves inaugurating a commerce in 

 palm oil. Already the trade in tlvat quarter is considerable, and it 

 wouldhave extended much more rapidly than it has done, were it not 

 that disorder and warfare in the interior have been promoted and 

 prolonged by the indiscreet zeal of some of our own naval officers 

 and by the desire of some of our missionaries to rule at Abeeokuta, 

 at Lagos, and at Badagray. AVhen, however, order and tranquillity 



